Eurydice
by onewithroses
Summary: Dean goes to get Sam from hell. AU Coda to 5-22


**Title:** Eurydice  
**Rating:** Teen  
**Characters:** Sam, Dean, Adam, other bits  
**Beta(s):** **blubird_pie**  
**Prompt(s):** **ohsam** : Michael and Lucifer face off in their best Winchester suits. Michael wins and sends Lucifer back to hell. He also sends Sam with him. Dean goes to find his brother. Sam suffers. A lot.  
**Disclaimer:** Still don't own  
**Summary:** Dean goes to get Sam from hell. AU Coda to 5-22

Hell spills downwards, coiled like a nautilus shell around a black stone where there used to be a soul. Its chambers fill one by one as though the locks have failed and the water is rising. It's a breathing thing, like a heartbeat of nightmares and screams, great bloody teeth and never-will-be's. Dean can feel it in his bones even as the stillness settles across his skin all cold and darkness and dread.

His feet stick to the steps and he stops. One second, two. He can see the light at the doorway from here, past the bloody wings and flayed flesh that hangs down in tatters and then covers the floor. He could still leave. He could step away.

He can't.

Leather bound shoes on skin covered steps and he's Orpheus to Sam's accidental Eurydice and he wants to throw up.

_Don't be such a girl._ It's Sam, and it's not, and the bloody red world wobbles like a lie before his eyes. _Eurydice? How do you even know that? Tragic Greek romance? And you bitch at me for having chick-flick moments. At least I'm not romanticizing my brother._

Dean has scratched recordings of AC/DC and Hells Bells is in the tape deck in the Impala-next to a crossroads and a dead body full of sin. The song's probably still playing, too, on repeat but it doesn't quite fit. Tape recordings only mean your musician when you're mad.

Dean wakes to the drip, drip, drip of rancid blood and the deep _sluucking_ sound his shoes should make on the floor as he moves like an old man down and down and down. Everyone and the devil knows that silence is worse than the screams when you're listening for someone, looking for someone. Silence only comforts the dead, memories, and the may-be's of Sam who's been down here at least as long as Dean has-breathing in blood and sucking on his teeth just so he can get enough air to scream.

Except there are no screams in the dark. There are no sounds at all. No dark beating wings next to the crack of whips and filthy lies. He had dreamed and dreaded those sounds. He had heard them over the roar of basketball, sitting with pie in his hands next to Ben. He had tasted them on Lisa's lips and in the gentle touch of her fingertips spilling over his shoulder.

He could hear his own voice roar behind it all like an ocean tide, demanding what he didn't want to know, _What am I supposed to do?_

Life was Dean's shell. It kept tumbling up over itself, doubling and doubling until no one could keep standing under the weight of should-be's. Dean tried anyway. He really did. But trying doesn't mean succeeding and now he's walking down hell's staircase like its part of his own backyard. He's lived here before; seen these walls. He's felt those whips that don't exist...and now he's nothing but a hollowed out shell where an angel could have been and everything _is different_.

Maybe, he thinks, Sam _deserves_ this.

_I let him out. I gotta put him back in, Dean._

Maybe, he thinks, it's because _he_ deserves this.

_You are no longer a part of this story!_

Dean's an empty marionette trudging down the slopes of hell to finish a story he was written out of. He's off to pick up the last of his family as though hell's become some sort of deranged daycare that the powers-that-be keep sending them to. Only this time is different. This time it's not him who's waiting just around the corner screaming _Sam_.

And that makes it worse.

Eurydice never got a happy ending.

At the center of the pit there's a cage of black glass. It echoes screams like silence and Dean can feel them in his bones as he moves down and down and down. The black stone pulses like a living thing. It presses into him, pushes him back. Every step where his shoes hit slick black stone he can hear Sam scream in his mind. _You got to promise-_

The words press into his chest.

_You got to promise-_

They drag into his lungs like fingernails, gripping and dragging _down_.

_You got to promise-_

The words cover his eyes in haze which he would think were tears if he knew what crying felt like anymore. They could be, maybe, if the hot cold of hell didn't freeze his eyes dry.

_-not to try to bring me back._

As if things were ever that easy.

As if Dean were simply going to be _trying_.

While the rest of the world was set to right with picnics and barbeques, down in hell the chess board is still out. The players still stand on black and white squares-frozen on the black box that is at the heart of everything.

There is blood on Dean's jacket, blood on his shoes. He wipes his cheek with the back of his hand and smells everything that screams _demon_ all over him. He could never forget the smell. He could never forget the look of blood on Sam's skin, dripping down his mouth. He could never forget the way Sam's eyes shown.

He can still see the demons hanging like stuck pigs above the devil's trap. He can still feel the weight of their blood in milk jugs and pans as he carried them to the trunk of the car.

Dean can remember the outright fear on Sam's face. He can remember the fragile front of stubborn pride. _This is the way it has to be, Dean._

It's been seven months of hell on both sides of the gate but now Dean just can't wait any longer. Castiel's the new sheriff in town but there's been no hand out and not disrupted grave. Dean was fragile before the end of the world and the end without Sam broke him. It broke him on the baseball field. Broke him in the car shop. Broke him in the bathroom as he stared in the mirror and saw pink shaving jell and toothpaste.

It broke Lisa when his soul was too tattered to be repaired with kind words and time.

He hits the bottom and there is black stone and blood walls. There is skin climbing down wards, leaving congealed ridges in the sick and mess. There are white wings turning black. There are no screams. There are no sounds but the stubborn sound of Dean's own heart pounding out the tattoo of still alive.

No one came out to greet him and the Sam in his head mocks him, _Did you really think someone would come out to greet you? 'Welcome to hell, jerk'?_

"Where are you, you bastard." Dean doesn't know if he's talking to himself. If he's talking to Sam. If he's talking to Adam. To Lucifer. To Michael. "Fuck." He cards a hand through his hair and spits his words. "Fuck."

He can taste blood and pain and screams but his feet are flat on black stone and there is _nothing there_. No demons. No devils. No brothers screaming _Dean_.

Dean stands. He stands and waits and watches the wall crawl with maggots and the skin climbs up towards the ceiling like a living thing. He watches the stairs that coil up along the edges of his vision and the way they seem to move up and up and up all alone.

He looks up. Then he looks down and wishes he hadn't.

Mirror, mirror. It's like they're trapped back to back in mirrors. Sam and Adam, Michael and Lucifer-they reflect one another again and again and again until it's impossible to see where one begins and the other ends. It's MichaelLucifer and SamAdam. Its two hands melting into one and two eyes wide with screams of furry.

They are the same-and they are different. They are together and separate.

There is blood on their teeth and Dean can't hear them scream but there is a fury and a wild fear that makes them seem to writhe under Dean's feet. He wants to step back. He wants to jump back. He wants to pound into the hard black stone until his hands crack, until _it_ cracks, and he has _Sam_.

_Sam, it's okay. It's okay. I'm not gonna leave you._

Sam left him. He fell into the pit as Dean stayed watching, though Dean would like to say _Sam always leaves_.

Perhaps it's intuition, perhaps its madness. Dean stands there for what seems like eternity. He is staring down into the darkness and into his brothers who share hearts in the deepest pit of hell. There is no guard. There are no demons standing by. There is nothing but blood and their eyes staring up at him as he stares down. He does not have to put a name to the words he hears in his head.

_You can only take_ one.

They are shells within shells. One on top of the other for all eternity. When he sees Sam he sees Adam-two brothers in one. Lucifer and Michael. Adam and Sam.

But there was never any question who he would take.

Leaning down means his old bones ache in protest. It means his leather jacket scrapes the hard black stone. It means his hand passes through the glass like water-reaching and grasping for _Sam_ even as Adam screams _no, no, no_.

Screams are better than the unearthly quiet that the rest of hell maintains. It's like the hush before a storm with only Adam breaking it and that is better than cruel knowing smiles. Dean is sorry but he doesn't let go. He doesn't stop tearing Sam from the fight, from the cage until his hand is out. Until his shoulders are out. Until his chest. His knees. His feet.

Sam does not smile when he's out. He stares ahead. He watches the skin crawl downwards, ripped and raw and moving like a living thing.. He breathes shallowly, unfocused and dreamy.

"Sammy." Dean's voice doesn't echo and Sam's hand is cold in his.

_You know how this story ends, don't you?_ Sam again, maybe, in his head; in his heart. Dean can almost see him sitting on a motel bed with his laptop, staring up at him as he dictates research.

Sam had had a paper in high school on Orpheus.

_Gotta take your Eurydice up without looking back. Can you do that, Dean? Can you?_

That's the way these stories go. No one but angels can walk into hell and walk out again with no trouble and little time. Dean's already willing to take it. Nothing ever comes for free. In the pounding circle of hell the myth is a cheap shot and old school and Dean was always good for that.

He doesn't look down to see Adam pounding on the glass screaming. He doesn't look back to see AdamMichael's wild fear and fury. He squeezes Sam's hand, rubs his fingers over Sam's calluses and broken nails, and then turns to walk back up the winding staircase.

To freedom.

To home.

This is a deal he can make. He can never look back, only forward-even as Sam's feet drag on the blood caked floor. Even as his feet stick to the skin. Even as Sam's fingers stay cold and Dean swears if he looked back Sam's eyes would flash black or blue or something else entirely.

It's slower going up with two than one. It's slower going up without an angel's hand.

Step. Step. Dean feels his heart pound.

Is he still there?

Is he really there?

Is it really him?

Sam. Sammy. He asked Dean never to try to break him out. Where would he go? What would he do? Dean had already sold his soul-and who knew what would come out if Dean opened the cage door to let his brother out again?

Sam had stared forward. Dean had watched his face. Dean had called him _Sam_, held his hand.

Cold.

Maybe there is a hole in Sam's heart where a soul should have been. Maybe there's nothing left but ice and fire, broken wings and flayed flesh on the walls. Who's to say he has Sam at all.

It was Adam that screamed _Dean, Dean, Dean._.

There's a light at the end of the tunnel that lights the walls blood red. It shows great bloody teeth and never-will-bes so hard that they press into Dean's heart until he wants nothing more than to _scream_.

Whose hand does he hold? Whose voice does he hear?

_Dean. Dean! You gotta promise me!_

Lisa had cold beer and a warm couch. Ben had games to play and a smart mouth that asked too many of the right questions.

Hell spills upwards, coiling up to the beginning of the world where ACDC's Hell's Bells is still playing in the tape deck. The song calls out, pulls them like a piper towards the surface. It leads them through the grasping wings and imagined fingers of all the damned who no longer cry out and are left grasping instead.

Sam's fingers are cold. His hand is limp. Bigger than his brother, he still feels small and Dean can't help but think,_ Is he still there at all_?

Eurydice never had a happy ending.

She disappeared like smoke before Orpheus' eyes because he couldn't stand to not look back.

Sam isn't there when Dean turns at the mouth of hell.

He isn't there when the first light of dawn skims over the Impala and into Dean's eyes.

He isn't there as the Impala finally switches tracks from AC/DC to Kansas and back again.

Dean never looked back. Not until his feet were on solid ground. Not until the Impala stared back at them. Not until he could taste rain in the air.

But Sam isn't there anyway and Dean wonders if he was ever there at all.

Sam breaks the street light one night when Dean is back at home playing family with Ben and Lisa. He stands there too long and all the dogs in the neighborhood stop barking, wait quietly, and whine.

He's Eurydice and he's not. He's been dead, but he's not. He trudged out of hell with his hand in his brothers-listless and too cold with the devil in his soul. He kept walking until he could see sunlight. Until he could feel the breeze on his cheek. Until he could move his own two feet.

Then he let go.

Hell can never keep a Winchester and a brother can never leave a brother down in the pit of hell.


End file.
